I was 15 months old, a happy carefree kid, until the day I fell. It was a bad fall. A piece of glass cut my eye badly. From then on, my injured sightless（失明的）, cloudy gray eye lived on with me. Sometimes people asked me unpleasant questions. Whenever kids played games, I was always the "monster（怪物）". I was always imagining that everyone looked down on me.

Yet Mom would say to me, "Hold your head up high and face the world." I began to depend on that saying. As a child, I thought Mom meant, "Be careful or you will fall down or knock into something because you are not looking."

As a teenager, I usually looked down to hide my shame. But I found that when I held my head up high, people liked me. 

In high school I even became the class monitor, but in my heart I still felt like a monster. All I really wanted was to look like everyone else. When things got really bad, I would cry to my mom and she would look at me with loving eyes and say, "Hold your head up high and face the world. Let them see the beauty that is inside instead of your appearance."

My mom's love was the sunshine that made me bright. I had faced hard times, and learned not only to be confident but also to have deep compassion（同情）for others.

"Hold your head up high" has been heard many times in my home. I say it to my children. The gift my mom gave me lives on.